Honestly, the NBA Awards and MVP doesn't have to be be hard. • MVP: James Harden • Defensive Player of the Year: Giannis Antetokounmpo • Coach of the Year: Mike Budenholzer Award their proper impact and call it a day.
This is it. If Harden has another big game vs. Giannis and the bucks in a W, so close to the end of the season, and so close to the official voting period, this MVP race is gonna get spooky.
Insane, never seen a player command so much attention. He’s the embodiment of making players around you better. You literally get wide open 3s or layups from his presence on the court.
Boston just got blown tf out at home by the 8th seed Spurs...Boston is solidly in 5th in the East, but they’d currently be out of the playoffs in the West fighting with the Spurs, Clippers, Thunder, etc for 1 of those final spots Bucks been padding their win count playing all these mediocre-below average-straight up trash teams
MVP will be settled Tuesday night. I think Harden needs to DESTROY the Bucks in order to have a legitimate chance. It’s the only way to overcome the hate. A nice double digit victory would be the icing.
Doesnt have to be a huge scoring night for Harden, but two things are needed 1. Rockets win 2. Harden drills a 3 in Giannis' face for the ESPN front page the next day
Gonna need Clint to really step up against Bucks. If he can dominate the paint, James will have a dominating performance.
No doubt and nobody mentions how trash the east is when talking about the bucks record. Sure they did well against top west teams but they aren’t beat up playing hard competition every game in the west.
I’ve been saying it for a while. I really think we beat the bucks bad like 12+ point victory. I don’t think harden gets 50 (but he sure might) but I do think his finger prints will be all over the game and everyone media and fans will leave the game knowing that Giannis is great and the next big thing but Harden is just on another level with his complete control of the game. I’m thinking 39 points 8 rebounds and 7 assist with 2 stl and 2 blk. He’s going to put on a last class and show him everyone he’s the best player in the nba. I’m saying it now. We win a chip Harden has to jump to 3rd best Sg of alltime and he’s a top 10 player ever. Win 2-3 rings (it’s possible he’s that special) and we can start to have the conversation of 2Nd best SG ever and is he a Top 5 player ever over Larry bird. It’s crazy the he had a legit chance at everything I just said.
Harden Haters are for real. There is a negative campaign against him for sure especially some of the ex NBA players. He is been the best Player in the League this season. Only Paul Pierce is saying that and even Tmac is not giving him props. I mean what else Harden need to do?
Giannis has won this MVP - I'll be more than happy to be wrong but the voting will NOT be close at all. I looked at the past 3 seasons of MVP voting where Harden finished 2nd or first (2015,2017 and 2018) I tried to put them into blocks of voting if there were enough people from the same group. For 2015 I had 3 groups - ESPN, National Writers, Local Writers 2017 and 2018 I had 5 groups - ESPN, TNT, Internet (national writers like Bleacher Report etc on internet only), National Writers, Local I did my best to group them to where they should fall based on what I saw their affiliation was. The biggest group that took a hit when they reduced the number of voters was the local writers. More voters went to TNT actually and other national voters. 2015 - I had 19 voters for ESPN, 25 for National and 86 Local Voters First Place Votes: Curry 14 Espn, 18 National and 68 Local Harden 5 Espn, 7 National and 13 Local By Percentage Harden did best in 2015 with the National folks getting 28% of the total first votes from their group 2017 ESPN - 24 Voters, TNT - 11 Voters, Internet (incl Fan Vote) 19 Voters, National - 11 Voters, Local - 36 Voters First Place Votes: Westbrook: 17 ESPN, 9 Turner, 10 Internet, 8 National and 26 Local Voters Harden: 3 ESPN, 2 Turner, 7 Internet, 2 National and 8 Local Voters 9 First Place Votes went to Kawhi (4 ESPN, 3 Local, 1 Internet, 1 National) and 1 to Lebron (1 Internet) Harden by percentage did best with the internet voters. 2018 ESPN - 21 Voters, TNT - 14 Voters, Internet 15 Voters, National 19 Voters, Local 32 Voters First Place Votes Harden: 19 ESPN, 13 TNT, 12 Internet, 16 National and 26 Local LeBron: 2 ESPN, 1 TNT, 3 Internet, 3 National and 6 Local By Percentage LeBron did best with the Internet crowd But what the crazy thing you can see here is between the two major national broadcast networks ESPN and TNT the last two years they accounted for 35% of the voting for MVP. In additional they all vote as a large block pretty much you had Kawhi getting some ESPN Votes in 2017 but all the voters from ESPN and TNT heavily voted in 2017 and 2018 for one guy only. There is definitely "toe-ing" company line or a narrative that best suits them. Even last year the narrative was the Rockets maybe beating the Warriors but there was the late season "LeBron is so amazing" and LeBron got 15 FRP which is hilariously high if you ask me. Now this season it seems like the voters gave Harden his MVP last year and he should not deserve any more no matter what he does. Now IMO Giannis IS a worthy winner if he does win, but I do think Harden has been far more critical to his teams success this season considering what he has done and the number of concurrent injuries he has had to deal with. Honestly it kind of sucks the Raptors keep losing because if they somehow took the 1 seed from the Bucks I think that would really weaken Giannis' case. But I would expect the voting to be like 80 First place votes or mo to go to Giannis and 20 or less to go to Harden if recent history on how the media votes is any indicator.
